Management by Originals: Inventor CEOs and Firms’ Strategic Change

We build upon theories and studies regarding inventors and strategic leadership to explain how inventor CEOs are likely to drive a firm’s strategic change. We explain why inventor CEOs have the unique attributes of divergent thinking and intrinsic motivation and, accordingly, pursue strategies that deviate from the past. We further suggest that the positive relationship between inventor CEO status and strategic change is strengthened by CEO liberalism, CEO career variety, and industry dynamism. Using a comprehensive longitudinal database of S&P 1500 firms, we test our theoretical predictions and find empirical support for most of our hypotheses except for the moderating effect of industry dynamism. In highlighting the prevalence of inventor CEOs and showing how this achievement-based experience of CEOs is related to strategic change, our study identifies an important and novel antecedent of this important strategic outcome.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/stsc.2023.0058.